A heated discussion lately spread widely on social media, after someone posed a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males came online to tell women how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
